Kevin Sinfield has revealed how close he came to coming out of retirement to play for the Sydney Roosters.
The ex-England captain spent all his glorious rugby league career with Leeds Rhinos.
But after a brief stint in union with Yorkshire Carnegie he almost followed his former national boss Steve McNamara to the NRL.
In his autobiography, Sinfield briefly mentions turning down an “impromptu invitation” to play with the Roosters after, ironically, injuring his foot while out on a run.
Expanding on that, he explained: “I’d gone out there to watch the State of Origin, just after I’d retired.
“Steve McNamara was at the Roosters as assistant at the time and I knew the coach Trent Robinson from his time at the Catalans Dragons. I really rated him as a coach and I’d always loved working with Steve, too.
“They asked me to go in and speak to the squad. And Steve did mention to me about staying on. I was 35. This was around June time and I’d have been staying for the rest of the season.
“But, as with all these things, it was just down to timing.”
Sinfield eventually joined the RFL as its rugby director just two months later.
But asked if he’d wished he had thrown himself into the revered Australian competition, he added: “It’s different now. With the difference in salary cap, I think I probably would have looked at it (the NRL) a little bit more than what I did.
“For the vast majority of the time I played - until the last couple of years - the cap was very similar to Super League.
“Money’s never been a big driver at all. It’s about being happy and being in a team that I’m proud to be a part of and I was playing for a team that had very similar values to my own.
“I’ve no regrets about how things panned out. Things change and you have to adjust throughout your career and that’s in anyone’s life, I suppose: you make mistakes, get stuff wrong and you wish you perhaps could go back and do it a slightly different way.
“But I’ve always tried to have a good intent and right integrity about it.
“And that enables me to look into the mirror and say sometimes I wasn’t good enough or I got that wrong. But actually always trying to be right with people and be fair.”
